• Offers guaranteed amount level of CPU performance
  • Has the ability to burst to high level on spiky loads
  • Baseline CPU governed by “CPU Credits”
  • “Credits” Accumulate when the instances operate below the base line and vice versa
  • Most general application that needs quick access to CPU but most of the time moderate levels of CPU
  • 1 CPU credit = 1 vCPU running at 100% for 1 minute.
Instance TypeMax CPU Credit Balance
t3.nano72
t3.micro144
t3.small288
t3.medium576
t3.large864
t3.xlarge1,152
t3.2xlarge1,536
  • T3/T4g Unlimited Mode: Allows instances to burst beyond their baseline even when CPU credits are exhausted — but incurs extra charges.

Usecases

  • Many workloads don’t require constant CPU performance all the time.
  • Microservices or low-traffic APIs
  • Development or staging environments
    • Web servers with sporadic traffic